Pain
by Min Daae
Summary: It was a bad day. Lucivar's been punished once, but there is a second punishment...that of the self. Warnings for self-injury, implied rape, and a lot of potentially disturbing stuff about torture. ONESHOT.


Motion was not a cure for worry, but it did help.

So Lucivar paced, even though his legs ached and his soul ached more. The darkness here was oppressive, the stench of despair and rot heavy in the air. The air moved sluggishly, seeming to caress his skin, making him shudder and his flesh cringe. Today had been a bad day, he considered, pausing for a moment and closing his golden eyes, face taut. Perhaps the worst for a while. Killing the bitches did have penalties, but it was hard to think of pain when you were riding the killing edge and dosed to the breaking point with that vile drug safframate. It was only after he'd sliced her to pieces that they'd managed to break down the door…and half-mad by then, he'd nearly disemboweled a few more of Zuultah's men before the agony through the Ring of Obedience forced him to his knees, spasming as he lost control of muscles that held him upright. And after they'd subdued him, after they'd chained him to the columns, still mostly naked and struggling against the gag between his teeth, then the punishment truly began.

Lash after lash striping his chest, his legs, his thighs as another witch, grinning, sent throbbing bursts through that damned ring. He snarled and hissed and fought, but there was nothing he could do as they sat and watched and laughed, sipping their cool drinks as the sun overhead drew higher and beat down on his head. And when he was exhausted from fighting the lash and the bonds, they offered him water. He knew what it was, but he could only drink anyway and howl with rage when they tightened the bonds and resumed their torture, the lashes softer but far more brutal as they tore open his sensitized skin and set his nerves afire and he couldn't hold back the screams, begging for mercy or relief or anything. They let him go and he collapsed to the floor, limp, exhausted, but still blazing with the effects of the safframate.

They laughed as they used him, laughed and laughed as they ran their hands over his trembling, bleeding chest and he screamed with agony beyond imagining, his wings painfully pinned beneath his sprawled, restrained body.

Yes, it had been a bad day.

But there had been worse…there had been longer.

At least the safframate had worn off…the pain from the lashes was now endurable, and they had given him something to help the healing process. It wouldn't do to have their pleasure slave too marred. The real ache was in his soul, staring east toward Chaillot, the place where he longed to be and could not.

A soft snarl stopped in the back of his throat. He longed to contact Daemon, to ask him about her, to drink in even a feeble description of the dream they shared from this distance – but he could not. He could only draw attentions to them both – attentions that might be deadly if Dorothea got nervous. And so he waited, and begged, and screamed.

_Weakling._

He bent over and squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the jerks of pain that movement caused, and bit his tongue hard. He uncurled his hands and found the deep cut on his side in the soft flesh between ribs and stomach muscle. He gritted his teeth and dug his nails into the wound, followed by his fingers, peeling back skin to expose raw, red flesh, blood starting to flow again. Breath hissed through his teeth, but he kept silent, pressing his nails into the exposed tissue, blood running down his fingers and dripping from his knuckles, sweat breaking out on his forehead as he took the pain and savored it, the soft sound of his blood dripping on stone comforting.

_Coward._

He thought of Jaenelle, and of Daemon, pleaded with the Darkness and the blood on his fingers that she would live, that he would protect her, and that someday he would live to see her again…his shoulders spasmed as his fist contracted reflexively, digging the nails into undamaged muscle. The scream boiled up behind his teeth, but he fought it back, forced it back into his lungs, his nostrils flaring wildly, refusing to loosen his grip, to give himself any mercy.

_Gutless prick. _

At last the fire in his side began to lessen. He unclenched his teeth and let out his breath in a shuddery hiss, slowly unclenching his fingers and removing them from his own flesh. He held his bloody fingers to his nose and smelled the tang of it in the nearly freezing air. His breath came out in a cloud, but he hardly shivered, even dressed or undressed as he was. He held his bloodied hand to the sky, as he had every day for weeks. "Please, Darkness," he whispered in a hoarse voice. "Please keep her safe."

Ritual completed, he slumped in a corner of his cell, exhaustion taking hold of him and the sick knowledge that another day awaited him tomorrow – a day of pain and humiliation. But he would learn – he would learn to _accept _the pain and _embrace _it…he was a Warlord Prince. An Eyrien Warlord Prince, no matter what the records said. He would not beg any longer. He would be _strong –_

He would be faultless for his Queen.


End file.
